The present invention relates to conveyors for logs, and particularly to agitating devices for aligning logs within conveyors.
Logs are typically moved between wood processing stations by conveyors. Logs tend not to stack evenly or uniformly in conveyors. Rather, the stacked logs tend to be misaligned, crooked and unsettled in the conveyor. Maintaining alignment of logs in a conveyor is difficult because logs are irregular in shape and enter the conveyor askew. Logs have different lengths, diameters, shapes and surface features. Keeping logs aligned as they are being conveyed is desirable so that the logs are uniformly arranged as they enter a processing station downstream of the conveyor.
There is a long felt need for a conveyor that aligns logs before discharging them from the conveyor. The need is particularly acute for conveyors that feed logs to cutting devices, such as stranders (also referred to as a flaker) that cut logs into wafers used to form strandboard. Irregularities in the alignment of logs entering a cutting device may reduce the precision of the cutting operation. The reduced cutting precision may cause inefficiencies, such as wasted wood materials, during the cutting operation. The efficiency of the cutting operations may be increased by feeding logs aligned parallel to the conveyor path and uniformly stacked to the cutting device.